


Metempsychosis (Angels aren't the only winged creatures)

by coffee_mage



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Circuses are scary places, Gen, Origins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 06:51:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffee_mage/pseuds/coffee_mage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was too small to perform yet, when they joined the circus.  </p><p>Things change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metempsychosis (Angels aren't the only winged creatures)

He was too small to perform yet, when they joined the circus. The owners couldn’t risk getting found out for employing their roving band of runaway minors, so anyone who couldn’t pass for an adult with stage makeup had to stay out of sight during the shows. Too small to perform, but not too small to learn, he thought.

So he’d work extra hard to make sure he could take his breaks when his favourite acts rehearsed. He’d sneak into the big-top and watch as Buck shot off arrow after arrow after arrow, swinging from the trapeze or running along the tightrope as he went. He had to stay quiet so he wouldn’t be seen. None of the other kids did what he did, so he didn’t know if he’d get in trouble. The problem with having to hide away like that was, he couldn’t see everything he wanted to.

He makes it there before Buck one morning and he takes the opportunity to look for a better hiding place. He wants to see the angle the other man pulls the string at and, surveying the tent, the only place he can see that would give him that vantage is straight up. He takes a deep breath and climbs the various guy wires leading up to the top of the centre pole. Almost all the way up, there is a junction of three guy wires and he settles in there, bracing his feet and peering down. It is high. It is very high and his stomach churns. It is too high. Far, far too high. He is going to fall and die. 

And then Buck gets up on his platform and starts warming up, firing off a couple of non-trick shots. And Clint forgets he is afraid, just focusses on what Buck was doing. It is brilliant and Clint finally understands how Buck sets up his aim. 

Somehow, he manages to climb down without breaking his neck. As soon as his feet hit the ground, a hand claps down on his shoulder and he screams, startled.

“Do not ever do that again,” Jacques says, looming over him.

“Do what?” Clint asks defiantly, his relief at being on solid ground making his legs steady even as Jacques pulls him closer.

“Attempt to learn from Buck. He is… Not a very good performer. If you want to learn how to perform, you will train with me.” 

He stares up, eyes widening in awe. “You’ll train me?”

“Yes. If you are so determined that you risk your neck to learn of the performers, then you will suit me well.” Jacques pulls him along, towards the large white trailer with “Jacques Duquesne ‘The Swordsman’” emblazoned across the side.

Clint smiles. “I won’t let you down, sir!”

There is something chilly, he thinks for just a split second, in Jacques answering smile. “Of course you won’t.”

But then, he was never that good at keeping promises. Barney’s always telling him that, especially after Clint becomes Jacques’ apprentice. He lets Jacques down (over and over again, climbing into the upper reaches of the big top and spending hours there, especially when Jacques has been drinking) in the end. He’s more interested in the bow than the sword and he does what it takes to watch Buck whenever he can. Jacques eventually has Clint help him cheat in poker games and surprises him by winning him archery lessons with Buck.

It’s too good to be true, of course. Jacques is just using him to spy on Buck, get information to make his act so much better than Buck’s. But he still gets to learn, and that’s really the important part. He gets to learn. Every time Clint picks up his bow, he feels alive. He learns to hang from the trapeze and take aim. The trapeze is still when Clint does this—he’s far from ready to be moving himself while he aims—but it changes everything. The world clicks into place and his aim improves tenfold, a hundred fold. Whether he’s upside down or sitting on the bar, he hits his mark every time, every single time when he’s up there.

Buck thinks it’s funny how much calmer he gets when he’s up high enough to break his neck. Clint doesn’t think it’s funny. He thinks it’s funny how everyone else doesn’t get it. He has _perspective_ up there. He can see the angles better than he ever could with the ground distracting him and distorting his perceptions (but he’ll get better, oh, he’ll get better, he tells himself as he practices every moment he can).

He gets his own act, thin, slender arrows taking out one pip on a playing card from the other side of the bigtop. Clint is now Hawkeye and people see him for what he can do. And what he can do is incredible. He’s already getting almost as good as Buck. His eyesight is better than anyone else in the whole circus. Barney is still an asshole, but Clint is Hawkeye now and doesn’t have to _be_ Clint anymore if he doesn’t want to and maybe a little of him doesn’t want to be if it means doing what Barney says all the time.

And then everything goes to hell and his world falls apart and when it’s all over, he’s running for his life, running away from his life and he has to make a life for himself, somehow, somewhere. But he’s only seventeen and all he has to his name is his bow and a quiver of arrows and when he stops running long enough to breathe, he finds that he’s gotten himself into South America somehow and hell, isn’t that a trip, he’s signed up with some little militia for hire that said they could use a sharpshooter. His weapon may not be conventional, but you don’t need a long distance sniper in the rainforest, they say. You need a precision sharpshooter from above and near-silence isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Clint Barton puts an arrow through a man’s eye for the first time when he is at the top of a tree, aiming past moss, bugs and monkeys. It’s funny, how little blood there really is. Just an arrow sticking out, suddenly, and the man falls. 

The height gives him perspective. Life ends. That’s what it does. He can’t stop it, but he can help it along. He’s good at helping it along. Like a bird, swooping from the sky. He is Hawkeye and he never misses. 

It isn’t until a man in a suit wakes him up in the dead of night and says “You have two choices, Barton. You can come with me quietly and do as you’re told or you can die right here with your masters” that Hawkeye realizes that there are times when he should miss, because the voice in his ear is fallible and even if they’re the one calling the shots, he's still the one taking them. His kill count is his.


End file.
